Some individuals are endowed with an ability to be “trendspotters”, while many other individuals are substantially trend followers. For example, trend followers tend to be interested in goods or services that are already popular or share a substantial amount of commercial success, whereas trendspotters have a knack for ferreting out a good or service well in advance of the popularity or success the item later attains. Across disparate categories, an individual may behave as one or the other or a combination of the two. For instance, when buying movies released on digital versatile disc (DVD), the individual may substantially behave as a trend follower. Yet when buying a compact disc (CD) or downloading music online, the individual might be very apt at buying music in one genre that later becomes popular and/or commercially successful, whether or not the individual is aware of such an aptitude; but may behave as a trend follower in other genres of music.
In many market domains, the number of sales of a good or service is largely dominated by a seasonal or cyclical trend. Accordingly, sales projections can, in those cases, sometimes be accurately and reliably made based upon past sales of the good or service, or based upon past sales of a similar product or service. However, in other market domains, especially in the case of an emerging good or service and/or a good or service based upon artistic endeavors, analysis of sales trend data is generally far less certain. In these markets, sales are not dominated by cyclical trends, but rather by market forces such as fads, whim, or other subjective characteristic that, in the aggregate prove to be very difficult to forecast.